September 16 (Saturday)
September 16th (Saturday), 3:00 p.m. — 4:30 p.m. (EDT)
Zoom Meeting Link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/94551410844?pwd=S1VuYVRnOWZBTzQ5RjArK3oxWFNZZz09
Each session will follow the same format: Artists will give a 15 minutes presentation then spend 10 minutes showing the work (or excerpts). There will be a 5 minute break between each participant.
SONIDOS DE LA REVUELTA – RADIO PASAJES
Gabriel Morales and Kika Echeverria
Sonidos de la Revuelta (Sounds of the Revolt) is a sound archive containing different field recordings about the social revolt that took place in Chile in 2019, one of the most important moments in Chile’s recent history. This period was characterized by its massive and constant protest, self-convened assemblies, and on the other hand, the systematic violation of human rights by the police. From there, this archive is composed of three categories: Public Space, Protest, and Repression. This archive is available on the Internet since 2020. There we have an open call to share listeners’ impressions, to reflect on the soundscapes and their social and political readings. We realized that is important to outline how this sound archive can be activated, taking into account different contexts and sensibilities. From there, we are interested in reflecting on the relevance and meaning of this sound archive and the possibilities it offers to develop an emotive guide that opens up our different senses, with specific attention on listening and its political implications. There are methodological questions about how, who, and what. Today, this archive contains facts, but what can we do with them? How could a territory, which is in political tension, exercise its recent memory from this sound archive? How could other territories reflect on themselves and their recent memory from this sound archive? Are there relevant differences or similarities in their various political struggles?
Sonidos de la Revuelta is a Project made under Radio Pasajes, an interdisciplinary platform that functions as a receiver and broadcaster of vocal and instrumental sounds of social conjunctions. The purpose is to stimulate research on the sonorous qualities of the places and times we inhabit, generating spaces to exercise memory. To date, Radio Pasajes have carried out two projects, conceived as sound archives with different characteristics: Sonidos de la Revuelta (Sounds of the Revolt), and Escuchar cómo se escucha (Listen how it listens).
The team behind Sonidos de la Revuelta is formed by Gabriel Morales and Kika Echeverria.
Gabriel Morales. Sound Engineer, Master on Acoustics and Vibrations in Universidad Austral (Valdivia, Chile). Currently, he is working on a Ph.D. in Science, with a mention in Ecology and Evolution, at the same university. He is part of Soundlapse, scientific research on the bioacoustics signals of birds at the urban wetlands in Valdivia. (Contact: gab.sonido@gmail.com)
Kika Echeverria. Anthropologist. She is currently working towards an MA in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Her research is focused on sound, memory, and identity, from everyday life. She is experimenting with different artistic expressions, such as performance, sound installation, and sound pieces. (Contact: kika.echeverria@gmail.com)
Chimes (2023)
Superimpositions of Site and Overlapping Contexts
Tasha Zappala
Field recordings provide an opportunity to dwell within the details of the very quiet and to hear surroundings in new ways; stimulating memories, emotions, and associations between thoughts and external environments. Environmental captures can act as metaphorical sonic bridges; tied to both the here and now and geometrical spaces transcending inhabited place. Field captures in creative works communicate these perceptions to listeners through localization while creating meaning and demarcating experiential timelines. The audio-visual work Chimes (2023) considers field recording techniques and the use of audio-visual materials to communicate perspectives of site and sonic space for the bridging of distances. Chimes explores these ideas through approaches to listening, field recording capture and studio processes for the resituating of sonic materials. The ringing of a sound in the present prompts a multitude of memories; relational engagements between locations (geographic, digital, remembered, imagined) result in a merging and superimposition of sonic spaces. These spaces for creative practice are further changed as they are framed and mediated through technology; the transient nature of the sounds, juxtaposition of memory and contemplation blur the boundaries between sites and form a bridge between the two. When listening, sound and sonic materials prompt memory and associations between thoughts. This can create overlapping auditory situations in which sites and spaces previously dwelled, remembered or imagined superimpose upon the present experience of sound.
Tasha Zappala
Tasha Zappala is a singer-songwriter, field recordist and researcher based in nipaluna, lutruwita/Tasmania. Originally from thul garrie waja/gurrumbilbarra, Far North Queensland, Tasha has toured extensively within Australia and internationally, as a solo performer and within a number of multi-disciplinary projects. Her Doctoral research, Songwriting and Sound: a Medium for Expressing Distance, is focused on the use of field recordings in contemporary contexts and creative responses to environmental sound.
Aditya Bhat
Composition of rivers, plant matter, synthesiser, saxophones, and percussion ad lib., commissioned by New North Music, Narrm/Melbourne. (Instrumental parts developed in collaboration with Justin Lu.)
This work, fixed/fleeting, combines synthesised, sampled, and instrumental sounds. A kind of homage to rivers, the title refers to the two timescales on which those bodies of water exist. They flow and change constantly, every moment; but their courses are shaped over thousands of years. Analogously, the electroacoustic part has a ‘fixed’ form that consists mostly of ephemeral, random-seeming sounds. The saxophone also voices this duality, emphasising instabilities and fragilities in otherwise ‘constant’ sound. Classical Indian concepts of shruti (‘heard’) and smriti (‘remembered’) knowledge also inform the work. The commingling of two kinds of past—documented and mythic—gestures toward a dialectic between imagination and reality that fixed/fleeting attempts to realise sonically. The work uses hydrophonic recordings of the Birrarung (Yarra), Brahmaputra, Derwent (timtumili minanya), and Melendiz (Uluırmak) Rivers. The Birrarung (in Narrm/Melbourne) has special significance, because fixed/fleeting is concerned with the relationship between settler-colonialism and ecological crisis here in Australia. Rivers are a primary theatre in which this relationship manifests. To serve settler-colonial expedients, the Birrarung was polluted by industry, artificially deepened, and had its course altered. The harmful ecological effects are being felt across time, now, more keenly than ever. By juxtaposing intense sonic manipulation with the quite subtle treatment of field-recordings, fixed/fleeting aims to interrogate the illusory separation of humanity and nature on which settler-colonial violence and extraction were premised.
Keywords: synthesis, sampling, colonialism, ecology, imagination, reality.
Aditya Bhat
Raised in Yorta Yorta country in northern Victoria, Australia, Aditya Ryan Bhat developed an early and alarming predilection for tapping on his own head! Concerned parents resolved to redirect these latent percussive impulses to a less hazardous outlet and enrolled him in drum lessons. From there it has been (more-or-less) an evolving journey of finding ever more delightful and strange things to hit.
In 2021, Aditya received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Melbourne. He is most passionate about contemporary music and has worked with leading musicians/groups in the field, including Anthony Braxton, ELISION Ensemble and Speak Percussion. A keen experimenter, Aditya’s projects are frequently collaborative, probing the space in-between ‘composition’ and ‘improvisation’. They often explore political and ecological themes, examining the many and varied effects of colonialism. Favourite pastimes include scavenging in scrapyards for instruments, recording ambient sounds while going for walks, and trying to bow unlikely objects.
Aditya currently studies percussion at the Australian National Academy of Music, under the guidance of Peter Neville. He recently completed an ethno/musicology honours thesis at Melbourne University, supervised by Prof Nick Tochka & Dr Andrew Callaghan. Outside of music, Aditya enjoys cycling, cooking, and reading about history and cultures.
Aditya lives on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin Nation.